This book survived
Subtitle: echoes on Al-Mutanabbi Street
By: Bryson Dean-Gauthier
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Beausoleil, Beau, 1941- editor; Shehabi, Deema K., editor; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Somerset, MA, USA
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: "I'm an instructional technologist, graphic design professor, artist and designer. I believe that creativity can be nurtured and developed by putting a designer's innate curiosity into practice, and by endeavoring to experience as much of the world as possible. These experiences can have a direct effect on students' creative work"--Statement from the artist's personal website (viewed June 22, 2015).
Notes: "Text sources: Beau Beausoleil & Deema Shehabi, editors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, 2011 ; Ring around the rosie, traditional nursery rhyme."

Typefaces: Bembo, Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.